The Australian visual arts sector is an ambitious publisher, with new releases rolling out each month. From stunning monographs worthy of pride of place on the coffee table, to chewy deep dives into artist practices – we take a look at new releases this quarter.
And remember, Melbourne Art Book Fair 2025 will return for its 11th year from 16 to 18 May 2025.
Architecture, design and sustainability
1. Collecting: Living with Art
Edited by Articulate founder Kym Elphinstone, Collecting: Living with Art offers a rare glimpse into the homes and lives of some of Australia’s most interesting art collectors, from the emerging to the iconic. With a foreword by John Kaldor AO, the publication profiles 26 art collectors from across Australia with vibrant photo-essays and intimate interviews about their personal collections.
The collectors span the youthful to the octogenarian and include artists, curators, architects, designers, gallerists, business professionals and philanthropists. Elphinstone says the book “provides a snapshot of contemporary collecting in Australia today”. She adds, “[It] is a visual feast and tribute to the personal journey of acquiring and curating art. It celebrates the enriching endeavour of bringing art into the home.” Text by writer Jo Higgins and photography by Dave Wheeler.
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Australia
Format: Hardcover, clothbound
ISBN: 9781760764258
Price: $79.99
Released: 1 April
2. SANAA in Sydney
Released during the close of last year (to coincide with the building’s 2022 opening), we are including this weighty tome in our first quarter wrap. Richly illustrated, it celebrates the architecture and design of the Art Gallery of NSW’s (AGNSW) north building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA – their first project in Australia. The publication, SANAA in Sydney: The architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, offers reflections on its decade-long vision and realisation, from its built form and engagement with art, people and the environment.
Editor: Michael Brand
Contributors: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Eve Blau, Michael Brand, Anthony Burke, Yuko Hasegawa, Juhani Pallasmaa, Sally Webster
Publisher: Art Gallery of NSW
Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
ISBN: 9781741741575
Price: $100
Released: late December 2024
3. Art in Residence
From an artist’s industrial New York work/living studio, a Brutalist London apartment in The Barbican to an architect’s modern coastal oasis in Victoria, Australia, these architecturally inspiring dwellings all have one thing in common: they house incredible art. This is the blurb describing Nicole England’s new publication, Art in Residence, which takes readers on a global journey to explore 25 extraordinary residences, and the objects and art that make each of these houses a personal expression of creativity.
Author: Nicole England
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books (London)
Format: Hardback, 272 pages
ISBN: 9781784889616
Price: AU$70, NZ$80
Released: 1 April 2025
For fans of architecture, this new international release is one to consider. Palm Springs is known for its modernist architecture and was home to some of the leading names in modernism, including Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, Hugh Kaptur and John Lautner. The Palm Springs School: Desert Modernism 1934-1975 by Alan Hess is the first to fully explore this school of design. It also includes essays by architects and cultural historians including Eddie Jones and Christine Madrid French.
Author: Alan Hess
Publisher: Rizzoli
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8478-4255-1
Price: AU$104, US$65
Released: 11 February 2025
Biographies that explore a creative life
5. Unveiled
This incredibly personal story by award-winning artist Vincent Fantauzzo, journeys from his early years growing up in poverty – kicked out of school at fourteen and a street-fighting petty criminal, to battling the world through dyslexia, and his eventual success as an artist. Described by the publisher, “Sometimes tragic, often hilarious but always deeply moving, Unveiled is a paint-spattered, star-studded, white-knuckle ride from the Housing Commission ghettos of Australia to the art galleries of Hong Kong, through the back roads of India and into the nightclubs of New York as Vincent chases his dream with humility, humour and a boundless love for people and a life better lived.”
Author: Vincent Fantauzzo
Publisher: Penguin
Format: Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 9781761348341
Price: $36.99
Released: 4 March 2025
6. Essence
ArtsHub‘s own Thuy On has released her third book of poetry, Essence. On explains of her collection: “Essence also explores language and literature, as well as mine the evergreen topics of love and loss. This time round, however, the collection also extends its reach into other creative forms, with poems about live performance, visual arts, film and song.” Divided into three sections, ‘Art’, features the poetic rendering of other creative forms, ‘Heart’ is all about love and ‘À La Carte’ is a miscellaneous grouping of poems, very much like small discrete menu items presented on a tasting plate.
Author: Thuy On
Publisher: UWA Publishing
Format: Softcover.
ISBN: 978-1-76080-299-8
Price: $24.99
Released: 3 February
7. Tight Crop
Tight Crop by Jack Ball is a dynamic assemblage of photographs that operates as both a photobook and poster collection by the artist. Described as an ‘experimental publication’, Ball’s work flirts with the boundaries of abstraction and figuration, while using collage to materially explore forms of queer embodiment and image-making through the lens of a personal archive. Edited by Rachel Ciesla, Lead Creative for the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Boorloo/Perth. Jack Ball is currently an Artspace Studio Program resident.
Design: Ziga Testen
Printed: Wilco Art Books, Netherlands composed of eight 48 x 72 cm posters
Editor: Rachel Ciesla
Publisher: Heart of Hearts Press
Format: PVC dust jacket, 36 pages, edition of 300
ISBN: 978-0-6487040-6-5
Price: $34
Released: 1 March
Read: The lost art of bookstore browsing – three tips for finding your next read
A Deep Dive
8. Rebordering the Archipelago: Asia Pacific Exchanges (Perimeter Editions 095)
Rebordering the Archipelago is the second title in the Postnational Art Histories series, produced as part of the Perimeter x CoVA publishing initiative with the University of Melbourne. Edited by Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro, the book grew out of a symposium of the same name in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This collection of texts and images weaves an interconnected dialogue across the breadth of art practices, knowledges, research and scholarly work traversing the Asia-Pacific. Refusing to conform to the Western academic paradigm and its flat global world of knowledge, this is a book that foregrounds both intergenerational knowledges from the past and new modes of listening, reading, sharing and resistance. Contributions by: Raqs Media Collective, Moonis Ahmad, Léuli Eshrāghi, Victoria Hunt, Natalie King, Yuki Kihara, Helly Minarti, Tamarra,Yedija Awom, Ginoe and Mark Teh.
Editors: Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro
Publisher: Perimeter Editions x CoVA at the University of Melbourne
Format: Softcover, 208 pages
Design: Beaziyt Worcou
ISBN: 9781922545398
Price: $39
Released: Launched Saturday 8 March at The University of Melbourne. Free event presented by the University of Melbourne, Perimeter Editions, Asia TOPA and Arts Centre Melbourne.
This volume features a Bahasa Indonesia translation.
More than just an exhibition
9. Turbulence & Transcendence: The Biennale of Sydney, The First 50 Years
This landmark book Turbulence and Transcendence: Biennale of Sydney: The First 50 Years by Brook Turner captures five decades of groundbreaking artistic practice, curatorial vision and cultural exchange through the Biennale of Sydney. The publisher says: “This history of its first 50 years chronicles the Biennale’s vision and ambition, stumbles and triumphs. It tells the story of half a century of ground-breaking art, and of the city that shaped – and has been shaped – by it.”
Nor did the Biennale just reflect those times. It helped make them, changing in the process our sense of our city and its place in the world, our past and future, what we were and could be. – Brook Turner
Author: Brook Turner
Publisher: Black Inc, printed by Graphicom in Italy
Format: Hardback and clothbound, over 400 pages
ISBN: 9781760643263
Price: $299, with $50 from the sale of each copy donated to the Biennale of Sydney. Only 500 copies printed, each individually numbered.
Released: Pre-orders now open
10. Energy Fields
Recently launched in Brisbane for the exhibition Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific (curated by Robert Takahashi Novak and Lawrence English), the catalogue by the same title showcases artists from Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand and the US. This publication sets out a series of texts and artistic methodologies that speak to the variable social, political, geological, scientific and cultural ways in which vibration is used to understand this region and to shape its very nature.
The exhibition was held at the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University in California last year before heading to the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane.
Author: Lawrence English
Publisher: Guggenheim Museum
Format: Softcover, 208 pages
ISBN: 978-90-834498-0-7
Price: $79
Released: 1 February
11. Yuriyal Bridgeman: yubilong(mi)bilongyu
Marking Yuriyal Bridgeman’s first monograph, this publication offers the first in-depth exploration of Bridgeman’s career to date. It presents cultural perspectives on his work from family members, community leaders in PNG, as well as leading artists, writers and curators. This exhibition and publication have been co-curated by respected Bougainville Elder and art curator Aunty Sana Balai, and co-edited by Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith University Art Museum. The publication includes texts from Sana Balai, Veronica Gikope, Angela Goddard, Pat Hoffie, Joe Kuman, Ruth McDougall, Michael Mel, Archie Moore, Khaled Sabsabi, Aaron Seeto, John von Sturmer and Bomai Witne.
Author: Edited by Evie Franzidis
Publisher: Griffith University Art Museum
Designer: Michael Phillips
Format: Hardcover, 310mm (H) x 210mm (W), 158 pages
ISBN: 978-1-922361-81-3
Price: $42
Released: December 2024.
12. Sabbia 20
Marking the 20th anniversary of Sabbia – the Sydney gallery that specialises in ceramics, art, glass and textiles – is the release of this significant publication that traces its journey and impact. Curators and arts writers have offered personal reflections of how particular exhibitions, artists, events or public programs have influenced them over that time and how Sabbia has helped shaped the contemporary art scene in Australia.
Publisher: Sabbia Gallery
Released: March (details yet to be announced)
Timeless coffee table magic
13. Chihuly in the Botanic Garden
Sprawling over 50 hectares, Adelaide Botanic Garden has hosted the works of iconic glass artist Dale Chihuly over seven months, transforming these historic gardens. Chihuly in the Botanic Garden, while a catalogue of the exhibition, is so much more, stepping through Chihuly’s connection with Adelaide, and his impact on the Australian contemporary glass sector. The exhibition continues until April 2025.
Publisher: Adelaide Botanic Garden, Wakefield Press
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781922027672
Price: $29.95
Released: January 2025
14. Fifty Public Works of Art In Sydney You Should Know
Hitting best seller status in its category on Amazon within 24 hours of being released in early December, Fifty Public Works of Art In Sydney You Should Know is great to pick up any time. This innovative guide, born from a wildly popular online video series by series producer Tim Stackpool, is now available as a paperback or an ebook. This guide showcases a carefully curated selection of 50 public artworks that capture the essence of Sydney’s diverse artistic heritage – from hidden gems to bold signature works. It includes dedicated pages for each artwork, complete with descriptions and interpretations and QR codes linking to an interactive Google Map for easy artwork location.
“With some episodes online reaching more than 200,000 views, there was a compelling case to collate an easy way to access and discover these artworks from wherever you are in the city”, says Tim Stackpool.
Author: Tim Stackpool
Format: Paperback, 108 pages, also ebook
ISBN: 979-8340022967
Price: $24.75
Released: late 2024
15. Cabal
Again launched during the close of 2024, we didn’t want to miss this great recent release. Cabal was Andrew van der Westhuyzen’s debut book and the first in a series of illustrated science-fiction short story works. The author is described as one of Australia’s pre-eminent creatives. Cabal is the culmination of his background of over two decades in design and animation, and illustrative and writing exploration of cli-fi survivalism, technological advancement and a uniquely visualised world.
Described as “less of a traditional graphic novel and more illustrated short story, Cabal is a meandering journey, both a provocation and celebration of technology and human invention and its relationship to the living world”. It has been designed as an A3 large format book that celebrates typography, uses strong bold colour and hybrid digital illustration.
Author: Andrew van der Westhuyzen
Publisher: Collider
Format: Paperback, 170 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9808351-5-1
Price: $150
Released: December 2024
And, if you missed our last art book wrap.
